Meditation on a Coke Can by Elliott Zimmermann: Lifecycle
Awarmess of Manufactured Objects

Awareness, dependent origination, and impermanence are
all important concepts in Buddhism. Can these concepts
be applied to our everyday interaction with the environment?
When looking at the Coke can you are about to throw
“away” (just where IS “away”?), just what are you aware
of?

In Buddhism, we often think of “awareness” in metaphysical
terms, such as immediate awareness of the “essence”
of an object. But in our everyday lives, objects also
have a more mundane physical presence that is important
to be aware of, if we are to act wisely to sustain
our environment.

An Environmental Engineering Approach

To
analyze completely a product of our modern, consumer
culture, an environmental engineering approach is a
good place to start. Environmental engineering uses
concepts like “sources” and “sinks” to look at where
a manufactured object originally came from before it
was manufactured (what all of its natural and human
resource “inputs” are), and where it goes after it is
no longer useful to consumers (how is it “disposed”
of).

Mathematical formulations, called differential equations,
are often employed to analyze the changes that take
place in the object on its journey from “natural resource”
to “useful object” to “garbage”. In effect, these
mathematical formulations try to describe the impermanence
and dependent origination of a technological object.
They try to simulate and track change over time between
objects and their environments, as well as their “interconnectedness.”
In engineering terms, interconnectedness is described
by positive and negative “feedback loops”. However,
“cause and effect”, “dependent origination”, or even
karma may be equally or even better ways of describing
and understanding interconnectedness.

Let’s try taking an environmentally aware view of
the aluminum soda container mentioned above. Part
of the essence of this soda can has a human aspect
to it; it is not simply a product of nature. In fact,
the economic cost of any manufactured object is partly
a reflection of the “unnaturalness” of the object,
because part, and sometimes all, of the economic cost
of a manufactured object represents the work that
went into making the object.

We are aware that a Coke can costs some small amount
of money. But normally, we are not aware of what that
monetary cost represents. It represents, to some degree,
frozen or crystallized human work. It represents the
work needed to run the machinery that extracts the
aluminum ore, the work needed to turn the ore into
aluminum, form the can, paint the can, etc.

This work needed to manufacture any object can be
traced back in an increasingly complex web: work was
needed to design and manufacture the machines that
manufactured the object. Someone had to design those
machines, and someone had to make the tools to make
those machines. And what about all the people involved
in this work? Someone had to grow the food eaten by
everyone involved in these tasks. In fact, the Shin
Buddhist concept of gratitude seems to naturally arise
out of a deep environmental awareness of the human
effort behind almost any useful manufactured item
used in our everyday lives.
Finding “Sources”

Everything
comes from and is caused by something: it has dependent
origination. This chain of causation can theoretically
stretch back to the beginning of time. To think usefully
about it though, the backward causation chain needs
to stop at some point--at the “sources”, or natural
resources, mentioned above. These are all of the things
we find in our environment that are necessary to manufacture
our material goods.

“Sources”,
or natural resources, are also impermanent and embedded
in a web of cause and effect. When humans use “sources”,
it is important to be aware of how their impermanence
is measured in time, and how these natural resources
change over time. For example, minerals extracted
from the earth will not regenerate for thousands or
millions of years, whereas trees can grow back in
a much briefer period.

When considering an aluminum soda can, what are the
“sources” needed to manufacture it? Aluminum ore or
recycled aluminum is necessary, of course. But large
amounts of energy, water, and lesser amounts of other
mineral resources are also required.

From an environmental perspective, furthermore, we
must always consider that each natural resource needed
to manufacture aluminum cans (or any other object)
is also a “source” for many other, often competing,
natural and human objects and processes. The large
amounts of water needed to manufacture aluminum cans,
for example, will not be available for other human
or natural needs, such as human agriculture or natural
forests.“Garbage” and Recycling

An
environmental awareness of our aluminum soda can now
encompasses the “sources” inherent in its being, the
human work bringing it into existence, and the impermanent
nature of its current use. That awareness needs additionally
to include a final important aspect of its changing
nature: its existence once its usefulness as a soda
can has ended. It will then become “garbage”, which
must go somewhere. And where ever it goes, it will not
“go away”, but will eventually go to an environmental
“sink”.

As with “sources”, “sinks” are a human concept imposed
on the never-ending chain of causation and dependent
origination. “Sinks” are what we call the environmental
destinations of our waste products. The soda can may
end up in a landfill, at the bottom of a lake, or
as recycled aluminum to make new aluminum objects.
In all cases, there will be interactions between our
waste products and their sinks, though those interactions
can vary greatly in speed and environmental impact.

Every decision we make about what sources and sinks
to use for manufactured objects, as well as decisions
about how to use these objects, sets in motion an
endless series of cause and effect. For example, if
recycled aluminum (instead of bauxite ore) is used
as a source for new aluminum, the amount of electric
energy needed to produce the new aluminum is much
less. Thus, less electricity needs to be produced.
If this electricity comes from hydroelectric power,
less water is required, and this can have an impact
on salmon populations. If the electricity is produced
by coal burning, there will be less demand for burning
highly polluting coal. Additionally, if the aluminum
can is manufactured from recycled aluminum, a “sink”
becomes a “source” for new aluminum. This means less
need for bauxite ore (from which aluminum is made)
and avoidance of the whole series of environmental
cause and effect relationships required to mine that
ore.

If our aluminum can is not recycled but is thrown
in the garbage, it will eventually end up in a landfill.
This is an alternative sink. While a landfill “sink”
for a soda can is fairly innocuous, the atmosphere
and water bodies (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) offer
many more potentially dangerous cause-effect relationships
when used as “sinks” for our culture’s discarded possessions.

Buddhists are often advised to be aware of the colors
and smells of objects, and this should include manufactured
objects, which may also have smells, colors, and other
aesthetic aspects. Environmental awareness of manufactured
objects needs to include the potentially dangerous
and complicated nature of the relationships between
the “sources” of these aesthetic aspects and their
eventual “sinks”. The colors on many manufactured
objects, for example, come from the application of
paint. Paints may use volatile solvents that cause
air pollution and have potentially toxic health effects.
Paints also may use color pigments containing heavy
metals that are toxic if they get into food or drinking
water. When we look at a beautifully painted automobile,
it might be useful to reflect on the changes that
have occurred to make these products safer (for example,
heavy metal pigments have now been removed from most
automobile paints), and how much more still needs
to be done.Taking an Holistic View

The
above comments about the important cause/effect relationships
between manufactured objects and the environment have
very broad application in our modern technological culture.
From an environmental perspective, activities that did
not used to be considered part of the “manufacturing
sector”, such as growing food or providing medical services,
need to be analyzed in terms of their “sources”, “sinks”,
and interrelationships with the environment.

If we are to have a healthy environment, we must now
be aware of the sources and sinks for our food, our
clothing, and many other material objects and services.
Anytime humans manipulate or change the environment
to satisfy their needs or desires, it is very important
to be aware of the web of cause and effect relationships
that are being initiated, and that will stretch far
into the future. All environments have human “carrying
capacities”.

The carrying capacity of the environment is its ability
to provide “sources” of natural resources and “sinks”
to absorb waste products without seriously disrupting
the complex interrelationships that allow continued
provision of those sources and sinks. If “carrying
capacity” is surpassed, then the availability of natural
resources will decline and the ability of the environment
to safely absorb our waste products will also decline.

Our desire to gain more happiness through having more
people consuming more products and services inevitability
must lead to less happiness because of an environment
that can not support the demands being made on it.
It is only through abandoning the illusory happiness
of the current consumer culture—a culture that ignores
the inherent complexity of a single can of soda--that
humans can come into a stable and sustainable web
of interrelationships with their environment.